The decision to take AMD GPU’s off the web was made based on support. More Specifically, support from AMD to Origin, and Origin to our customers.
Take their last chipset announcement for example. It was another hardware representative that informed us of the new Hawaii chipset. AMD never told us anything about it, nor shared a road map outlining its future integration. When we did get with our AMD representative, we were told that there was a new chipset launching, and we could watch the event live and get answers to our questions. We also asked for samples to start our research and development process, something that is standard in the industry for bleeding edge integrators, and we were met with resistance there. How can we ask questions at the event live, if we haven't had a chance to R & D the reference boards? When they did agree to send samples it was for 2 R9 270’s, rather than the R9 280's or 290's that we would be more likely to offer. We are performance based and focus on high end systems. Moreover, this wasn’t the first time AMD had done something like this to us. Support from AMD to Origin hasn’t been where it should be or up to par like we get from other vendors. In my opinion it's due to our size. We don’t move enough AMD product for them to worry about us. You would think they would work with us to help grow the Origin- AMD business relationship.
With regard to supporting Origin customers who chose AMD product, it’s been an uphill battle. ”Primarily the overall issues have been stability of the cards, overheating, performance, scaling, and the amount of time to receive new drivers on both desktop and mobile GPUs”.
Those 2 issues, combined with the very low percentage of Radeon cards that we sell, it didn’t make sense to continue offering AMD GPU’s. The way they treated Origin during the announcement of the Hawaii GPU showed AMD didn’t care for Origin's business relationship. In effect, AMD dropped us.
As far as Nvidia paying Origin to do it, that simply didn’t happen. Nvidia doesn’t make enough in sales from Origin PC to justify the allegation. The numbers aren’t there for Nvidia to come close to six figures, (or any amount) the basic math shows that. Without giving away trade secrets, Nvidia doesn't make the cards, they make the GPUs. So every time Manufacturer X sells a video card, Nvidia makes a small percentage. If you multiply that number by how many systems we sell per year, the allegations simply don't add up.
Conspiracy is exciting, and everyone loves controversy. The reality is, it's nothing that exciting. We feel AMD left us hanging on both sides of support so we reacted. If and when things change and we feel we can offer AMD and provide systems to our customers that will provide the best overall experience we will. We don’t have brand loyalty. We have customer loyalty.